Will 21st century broadcasting use the airwaves?

[Commentary] The number of people watching broadcast TV with the aid of an antenna is a fraction of what it used to be; about 90% of U.S. homes tune in these channels via some form of pay TV. If Fox decided to shut down its transmitters tomorrow, it would cut off only 10% of its viewers, many of whom might quickly sign up for cable just so they could keep watching "American Idol." And doing so would not only end the threat Aereo poses to the retransmission fees Fox receives from pay-TV operators, it could conceivably enable them to demand higher amounts from those operators -- and from the Aereos of the world.

Such a shift from free to pay is contemplatable mainly because the four major broadcasters' programming is more popular than everything else on TV. That's likely to remain true even if they lose all their viewers in homes that rely on antennas. One might argue that networks should try to capitalize on the viewers brought to them by Aereo and its ilk, rather than cutting them off. More viewers should mean more advertising dollars, after all. But if Dish successfully defends the ad-skipping function of its set-top boxes, it may not take long for someone to come up with a service that combines that with Aereo's offering. Such a service wouldn't pay the broadcasters for their programs, and advertisers wouldn't pay them for the viewers. The federal government has tried to prod broadcasters to give up at least some of their airwaves so the spectrum could be auctioned off for more innovative uses, but the big networks have shown little interest in doing so. It would be richly ironic if a TV-over-the-Internet service caused network executives to change their minds.